National Review: Pentagon to carry out its first agency-wide audit

Betakit: Supreme Court of Canada upholds privacy protections for text messages

Quartz: Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance

Martech: Study: U.S. consumers think their data is worth only $244 per year

Harpers: Omnicide(That this is reality for every single person on Earth boggles the mind)

Engadget: All the cool gifts are made for spying on you

Gizmodo: How to track a cellphone without GPS…or consent

Task and Purpose: Report: The U.S. has 44,000 ‘unknown’ soldiers stationed around the world

Record Online: Report: opioid epidemic fueling rise in homicides

FEE: Europe is flirting with a disaster for free speech

AIER: End Net Neutrality

Jacobin: Why is there no “Saudi-gate”?

Scientific American: High IQ linked to mental disorders (Something I’ve long suspected.  Although should these mental disorders really be labelled “disorders” at all?

The Atlantic: Robots will transform fast food

Naked Security: US gov’t says it can break your encryption without a court order

Daily Telegraph: Amazon’s data theft means it’s the real Big Brother

Ars Technica: Circuit breaker thieves shine light on sheriff’s use of facial recognition

Phys.org: Six ways (and counting) that big data systems are harming society

Quartz: AI is now so complex its creators can’t trust why it makes decisions

Telecoms: Passwords about to become a thing of the past

IB Times: Google DeepMind AI became greatest chessplayer on the planet in four hours, beating current reigning AI champion

Antiwar.com: Trump tells Saudis to end Yemen blockade

Motherboard: You can now snort cannabis with new nasal spray

EnGadget: White House lets NSA’s warrantless surveillance continue until April

The Register: EU data protection groups: fix privacy shield or face lawsuit

TNW: Apple claims its data-gathering method doesn’t invade your privacy…much

Financial Times: Facebook privacy activist launches NGO to fund data lawsuits

Axios: Uber paid 20-year-old hacker to destroy data breach information

EFF: Government documents show FBI cleared filmmaker Laura Poitras after six-year investigation

Techdirt: The strange fight over who should take John Conyers spot atop the Judiciary Committee

HuffPo: Are LinkNYC kiosks surveillance devices? 

HowToGeek: Smartphone keyboards are a privacy nightmare

Fortune: Tired of being tracked online? Try Ghostery’s new AI tool

International Business Times: Your geolocation data is already for sale

GovTech: US Army turns to civilian recruits under new cyberprogram

Daily Press: From a cashless society to biometric surveillance: a terror-era to come?

Activist Post: TSA PreCheck probably a guise for mass collection of biometric data 

Harvard Business Review: Biometrics won’t solve our data-security crisis

Aviation Week: Pentagon spending on AI, Big Data, Cloud soaring

Chicago Tribune: Data-mining program designed to predict child abuse proves unreliable

Fox News: For cybersecurity, it’s business–not government–that should take the lead to protect private information

Lexology: The internet of toys: legal and privacy issues with connected toys

The Verge: DeepMind’s AI became a superhuman chess player in a few hours

BetaNews: Popular ai.type keyboard leaks personal details of 31 million users

WIRED: Evidence that Ethiopia is spying on journalists shows that commercial spyware is out of control

openPR: Global military surveillance drone market expected to grow rapidly over the next five years

Politico: Failure to share criminal data rampant, Pentagon finds

The Intercept: Trump White House weighing plans for private spies to counter “Deep State” enemies

High Times: Human brain designed to produce hallucinations

Ars Technica: Accused of medical malpractice–a lot? The VA may be the place for you

The web is virtually (pun intended in hindsight) humming with Net Neutrality think pieces churned out at a rapid pace, and I sit here wondering why almost no one knows of Tim Berners-Lee.  Like you, dear reader.  Berners-Lee, in short, invented the World Wide Web, and created the first web browser.  At CERN, in 1990.  Here is the very first website: http://info.cern.ch.  While Berners-Lee has lived an illustrious life after his creation, he is completely absent from popular culture in a way that boggles the mind.  Yet the implications and importance of his invention are impossible to understate. His creation greater than the advent of the printing press, and he greater than Gutenberg himself, yet almost no one knows of him.  For all of history, the human race suffered under a dearth of information, now it is submerged in it. I sit here with instant access to all the information known to the world.  Every source, every fact, every theory, without having to leave my seat or go searching through a dusty library.

It’s unbelievable.  More fascinating than the moon landing, the wheel, maybe even the invention of soap.  Before the web, where did most people obtain their news?  Was there a wide spectrum of opinions, provided with an unrestricted comments section?  It was Paleolithic compared to what I have at my command right now.  A comments section itself is revolutionary.  Before the net, people consumed the news in isolation, with no forum to voice disagreement or alternate views.  Now we have lively comments’ sections pointing out errors, directing readers to other sources of info, and ripping apart propaganda.  This all benefits us, the reader.  Never trust a news site with no ability to comment.

The web was developed over a period of several decades in a climate of almost zero regulation.  It has reached its current glorious state only due to the hands-off approach it has received thus far.  If it is to continue its evolution and continue providing the world with the unrestricted flood of information, then hands must remain off of it.  Net Neutrality is a first-step towards government control of the internet.  Just ask yourself what will come after Net Neutrality, do you really think government will stop wanting more control after Net Neutrality?  Laissez-faire!

Techdirt: NSA, DOJ still aren’t letting defendants know they’re using Section 702 against them

Ars Technica: Big Ag+Big Pharma=Big Problems: “McKenna’s crusade is against the rising threat of antibiotic resistance, and it is a worthwhile endeavor. Her description of a post-antibiotic world looks a lot like the pre-antibiotic world, in which roughly a quarter of children died of infectious diseases before their fifth birthday, surgery and chemotherapy were impossible, and a skinned knee could be fatal—and often was. It was a horrifying time to be alive.”

Telegraph UK: Life expectancy has dropped due to antibiotic resistance

Consortium News: America’s Military-Industrial Addiction

Phys.org: How identity data is turning toxic for big companies

Wired UK: The UK’s Kaspersky warning is a reminder: data ignores borders

NFC World: Acuity forecasts a trillion biometric transactions in the cloud by 2022

Forbes: The data center of the future is an empty room

Hemp Gazette: Industrial hemp to return to Wisconsin

The Cannabist: SWAT-style search for marijuana due to tea leaves in trash heads to court 

The Hill: Your tax dollars fund Afghan child rape

Al Jazeera: The Philippines: when the police kill children.  Horrifying state-sponsored murder of civilians under the guise of a ‘War on Drugs’.  The hysteria there has reached such a fever pitch that vague accusations or hints of any involvement in the drug trade brings an automatic death sentence.  Not even children are exempt.

More from Amnesty International: International Criminal Court must open investigation into unpunished child killings amidst Duterte’s War on Drugs.

Christian Science Monitor: ‘I Can’t Breath’ is a clear-eyed, hard-hitting account of Eric Garner’s death.Important example of how police can murder someone in broad daylight, with cellphone evidence, and get away with it.  It will continue to happen as long as the murderers face no consequences.

The Liberty Conservative: Senate will attach controversial surveillance power renewal to must-pass legislation

Forbes: 9 technology mega-trends that will change the world in 2018

Washington Times: Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act splits Democrats, Republicans

Business Day: Dressed to kill off unwanted cyber prying

Washington Times: Homeland Security officials botched 900 DACA applications

Business Day: Apple’s Tim Cook calls for privacy, security, humanity at Chinese internet conference

Australian Financial Review: Why China will develop AI faster than anyone else

CityAM: Data is the fuel for AI, so let’s ensure we get the ethics right

The Conversation AU: It’s time to talk about who can access your digital genomic data

NPR: Sexual harassment within the national security community

The Verge: The airport of the future will have extremely complicated lines 

Israel Homeland Security: Massive deployment of facial recognition systems in Moscow

CNBC: Blockchain goes from suspect to potential solution for security agencies

The Hill: There is no military solution to take out North Korea’s nuclear program

WIRED: Here’s the NSA agent who inexplicably exposed critical secrets

The Hill: Growing private sector use of facial scanners worries privacy advocates

Bloomberg: NSA surveillance bill sparks lawmaker debate over ‘unmasking’

Business Insider: Time running out for lawmakers mulling surveillance bills

The Federalist: 12 reasons Congress shouldn’t make lifelong surveillance the price of citizenship

Axios: The most impressive surveillance state in history

DW: Net activists launch digital cybersecurity advent calender

Digital Trends: Your next phone could unlock by reading your lips, ears, or even your heart

Washington Examiner: Pentagon watchdog touts $2 billion ‘profit’ from rooting out waste and fraud

WBUR: Under Trump, US troops in war zones on the rise

Activist Post: Connecticut’s new drone and surveillance program is an Orwellian nightmare

FEE: Meet the special interests keeping marijuana criminalized

ACLU: New surveillance bill would dramatically expand NSA powers

…and more from EFF: House Intelligence Committee’s NSA surveillance bill contains new threats and old 

Washington Post: Apple is sharing your face with apps. That’s a new privacy worry.

The Independent: Snooper’s Charter restrictions proposed by government after EU court rules data collection powers illegal

The Mac Observer: iPhone privacy for the paranoid: what you can do

Bloomberg: Facebook judge frowns on bid to toss biometric face print suit

Telecompetitor: Being the product for internet giants raises privacy concerns for consumers

Business News Daily: Cybersecurity and privacy predictions for 2018

FiveThirtyEight: Criminologists are asking Jeff Sessions to release FBI crime data

CBS News: Pentagon decides not to ban the use of cluster bombs

The Globe and Mail: Canada’s spy agencies casting wider net on citizen’s electronic data: report

Cannabis Now: The racial bias of drug-sniffing police dogs

Telesur: ‘Ethnic bomb’ feared as US Air Force confirms collection of Russian DNA